The contest to fill a seat on the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections has been turning some heads inside the local Democratic Party.
Attorney and longtime board member Inajo Davis Chappell is not seeking reappointment to the seat. The job of filling her seat falls to the nearly 500 party insiders on the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party’s executive committee. (County Democrats and Republicans each control two seats on the four-member board.)
Campaign strategist Kenn Dowell had been angling for the seat. He worked for years as political director for Marcia Fudge, the former member of Congress who served in President Joe Biden’s cabinet.
His pitch was that his grassroots campaign experience would help him lead the county’s election system. Dowell circulated an email highlighting his work in local politics, such as last year’s voter outreach campaign for Black men. The message included words of support from Fudge and U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown, who replaced Fudge in Congress.
One of the past campaigns he worked on was a 2018 lobbying effort against Cleveland Public Power’s billing practices. The group, Consumers Against Deceptive Fees, was funded by FirstEnergy and a nonprofit linked to the electric utility, according to reporting by Cleveland.com and the fossil fuel watchdog Energy and Policy Institute. Dowell told Signal Cleveland that he didn’t know FirstEnergy had paid for the effort. He argued there were legitimate issues to raise about CPP’s bills.
By Friday afternoon, Dowell said he had decided to stand down.
There’s another name getting buzz among Democrats: Melody J. Stewart, the former Ohio Supreme Court justice who just lost her reelection bid. Stewart, who in 2018 became the first Black woman elected to Ohio’s top court, would bring legal chops to the job if she runs. Stewart declined to comment for the moment.
The executive committee is set to vote on the board seat Feb. 8.
